Hut site, An Coimín, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the southern slopes of Sea Hill, overlooking Dingle Bay, a level terrace holds the barely legible outlines of what were once four roughly circular structures.
They sit within a sub-rectangular enclosure measuring approximately 9.8 by 12.4 metres, its boundaries formed not by any deliberately constructed perimeter wall but by old, disused field walls pressed into service as a boundary. The foundations survive only as low, fragmentary arcs of stone, their depths ranging from just over a metre to four metres across, and the whole complex is described as very ruinous, which is to say it reads more as a puzzle in the ground than as anything obviously architectural.
Sites of this kind, loose groupings of circular hut foundations sheltered within a simple enclosure, are found across the Dingle Peninsula and reflect a pattern of seasonal or subsistence settlement that stretches back across many centuries, though pinning any particular example to a specific period without excavation is rarely straightforward. The Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, published by J. Cuppage in 1986 under the title Corca Dhuibhne, catalogued this site among more than a thousand entries documenting the extraordinary density of early remains across the area. That survey remains a foundational reference for understanding how intensively this landscape was once used, and how much of that use has been reduced, over time, to faint traces in the hillside.